I have often picked up a Vince Flynn – and since the original author’s untimely death – Kyle Mills book about the CIA operative Mitch Rapp when in a bookshop. Having decided that, although I like action thrillers, these might be just too gung-ho American for my taste, I have not yet bought one. Though I was pleasantly surprised by American Assassin for a large part of the running time, some of my fears were confirmed towards the end.
Rapp, played by Dylan O’Brien, is recruited by the CIA for an elite top secret unit that eliminates bad guys. His tragic past, including his witnessing of the murder of his fiancee by terrorists, has left him unpredictable and desperate for revenge. Those qualities apparently make him a perfect recruit. After a fairly routine beginning that includes the expected training sequences at the hands of the cold and tough Stan Hurley, things really pick up when the mission starts.
Moving rapidly from London to Warsaw, to Istanbul and to Rome, all replete with shifty foreigners, Hurley’s team track some stolen uranium in the hands of a rogue ex-agent called Ghost (Taylor Kitsch) who is going to sell it for a nefarious nuclear bomb. The plot moves so swiftly with a few excellent action sequences, well staged by director Michael Cuesta that it is undeniably entertaining for most of the running time and I found it easy to ignore the fact that every non-American in the film was not to be trusted and some clunky moments in the script.
O’Brien is a little bland in his part, as is Shiva Neggar as his fellow team member. Keaton is hardly stretched in his role but is fun, with Sanaa Latham adding some quality as his boss. It was also surprising and nice to see Sydney White, so good in the TV series Starlings a few years ago, pop up in a blink of you miss it part and David Suchet bringing some gravitas to proceedings.
The climatic sequence, after so much good stuff before was a bit of a let down. Neggar inexplicably misses an opportunity to kill Ghost before he can do any damage. Then, the writers seem to realise that the threat to blow up a European capital city would probably be met by a shrug of the shoulders from most of America, so have to somehow get a whole fleet of US navy ships in harm’s way.
So, if you can live with the pro-America, no other country can be trusted message, American Assassin is an entertaining ride.
Rating: 7 out 10